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Song of the Week: March 25 – “Through a Glass Darkly”

3/27/2014

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I thought I’d try and continue in the spirit of an earlier entry and doing another ambient soundscape type of a thing this week.

This tune had it’s start over a year ago when I put together something on a rainy Christmas Day. I was going for something moody and ethereal, but it wasn’t working, though I’d found a few sounds that I liked. In particular was a church organ type of sound that I was getting out of the u-He Tyrell N6. It’s augmented here with the Martinic Combo V, and lots of reverb.

The driving force behind the piece is really the 16-note ostinato synth pattern, which is being layered by a number of synths: Chip32, Oki Computer in Reaktor (and a time stretched loop of the same sequence played as 32-notes), AAS Acoustic Strum, and Scarbee Mark I Rhodes. I was shooting for that cheesy 8-bit vibe with the Oki line. It reappears later in the piece on top a series of actual chord changes as well.

The secret weapon is the soundscape generated on NI Reaktor with Metaphysical Function. I layered two tracks of noise that came out of this thing.

Some other plugs:
  • Reaktor Carbon 2 (pad)
  • Reaktor Metaphysical Function (soundscape)
  • Reaktor Oki Computer (synth ostinato)
  • Chip32 (synth ostinato)
  • AAS Strum Acoustic / Scarbee Mark (ostinato)
  • Martinic Combo V (organ)
  • Tyrell N6 (spacey organ pad)
  • ZebraCM (bass)
  • Ultrabeat (drums)
  • Kontakt (drums)
  • Rob Papen RG Muted (chunky rhythm guitar)
  • Sampletron (mellotron choir)
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Song of the Week: March 18 – “Raincheck”

3/18/2014

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Lagging behind over here lately, on account of school and other contract work. Also, it seems that I’ve run out of space on my free SoundCloud account, so I’ll instituting a change of venue for storehousing the song files. Kind of a drag, since SoundCloud can tell me how many plays I get and all. Oh well….guess I’ll have to pony up and start actually paying for the service.

In the meantime, my latest offering was borne out of a rainy Sunday afternoon stuck inside, doing my best to put off doing actual work. I felt obligated to put “rain” in the title, and now that I think about it, I guess I was giving my actual work a “raincheck” so to speak. Anyway, I was trying to go for a more upbeat, groove-oriented fusion vibe for this tune. I’ve been listening to a lot of gospel stuff lately (Kirk Franklin, Richard Smallwood, etc.), and I was hoping for some of that to influence me somehow. Not sure it did, but I was thinking about the syncopation in that music and how I might emulate in a tune.

Again, I was trying to be a guitar player….I should just start apologizing for that up front. I do have plans of tracking a real guitar part in the places where you hear “synth guitar”, so just bear with me. Also had a time programming the drums. I should probably take a class on it or something.

Some items of note: found a pretty cool compressor plug called Molot by vlagd/sound, which I used on a buss for the drums and bass. Also broke out the ES1 for the bass synth, which I’m really digging. Two others I don’t mess with too much were the EVD6 and Ticky Clav by Big Tick Audio, both of which added a lot during the “funk synth solo” section. Most everything else are stock plugs that I use pretty much all the time:
  • Scarbee (Rhodes)
  • SampleTank (drums)
  • EXS24 (trinagle)
  • EVD6 (clavinet)
  • Ticky Clav (wah-wah clav comp)
  • Obxd (brass synth)
  • NI B4 (Hammond)
  • Kontakt (guitar/guitar solo)
  • Arturia 2600 V (synth melody/1st synth solo)
  • Arturia Mini V (2nd synth solo)
  • KV331 Synthmaster (pad)
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Song of the Week: March 6 – “Baggage Claim”

3/7/2014

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This week’s offering is more of an ambient soundscape than an actual song. I thought about developing the main motif a bit, but decided against it.

I ran across a site called freeSFX that has some great sound effects, which is where I found most of the ambient airport background noise and laughing kids and stuff. I also used a VST plugin produced by Tweakbench called Field, which has some need ambient sound effects. Another cool synth I pulled out is Plucked String by Synapse Audio (makers of Orion). It really doesn’t sound like a guitar, but it does sound pretty cool. Finally, I used Reaktor Spark (NI) for the sequenced 8th-note bass synth, and SynthMaster by KV331 Audio for the spacey pad sound heard throughout.

  • Tweakbench Field (ambient sound effects)
  • freeSFX (ambient sound effects and samples)
  • Obxd (bass filter sweep)
  • Reaktor Spark (bass)
  • KV331 Audio SynthMaster Player (synth pad)
  • Arturia CS80V (synth melody)
  • NI Kontakt (electric guitar)
  • Synapse Plucked String (acoustic guitar)
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    Pat Strawser

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